World Linguistic Diversity: Pushkin Museum Shows Exhibition “Common Language”

It is not known whether the Tower of Babel existed, but we are building skyscrapers to this day.

From time immemorial, two principles have been fighting in a person: the desire to “make a name for oneself”, as formulated in the 11th chapter of the Book of Genesis, and the desire to unite all the people of the world. The most eloquent and famous metaphor for this contradiction was the parable of the Tower of Babel. The exhibition at the Pushkin Museum called “The Common Language” begins with this biblical story. It is not known whether the same Tower of Babel existed, because of which God made people speak in different languages. However, we are building skyscrapers to this day. And to this day we strive to re-find a common language.

On the pink staircase leading to the White Hall, bricks are laid out, as if taken out of that very mythical Tower of Babel. On each brick stands a man in black – there are 12 of them in total, like a clock on a dial. And now the silence of the museum is cut through by the sound: “Until the word disappears,” is heard here and there in different languages. Each of the 12 participants of the performance speaks a phrase in their native language: Chuvash, French, Georgian, Arabic, Japanese, Italian, Hebrew, Armenian, etc. Between the phrases of the participants in the action “Until the word disappears”, fragments from the music of different peoples of the world sound – a sound frame The performance was created by the composer Oleg Makarov from more than 100 fragments. Such a sound installation, which connected multinational polyphony together, on one of the days of the exhibition “Universal Language” became a kind of gate through which one could get to the large-scale project of the Pushkin Museum. Visitors could freely pass through the sounding word, feeling the world’s linguistic diversity. For the author of the performance, the artist Sergey Katran, it was important that native speakers become participants in the action. And so that from one phrase a kind of sound corridor was formed, along which you can move freely. Yes, and the artist picked up bricks that were not simple – he specially brought ancient stones from St. Petersburg, found on the ruins of a now destroyed historical building.

The “voicing” of the idea of ​​the exhibition eloquently leads to its diverse content, presented in seven sections. The key becomes the one that represents the parable of the Tower of Babel. Here are not only illustrations by artists of different eras and nationalities that illustrate the tradition described in the 11th chapter of the Book of Genesis. But also other images of monumental skyscrapers, which at different times people dreamed of building, surprisingly similar to the Babylonian. Among them there are rare drawings. For example, the utopian architectural project of Georgy Golts, created at the height of the Great Patriotic War, 1942-43. The author came up with a building that resembles a medieval multi-tiered fortress, which should have become a pantheon of WWII heroes.

Or the project of the Radio City skyscraper, created for New York by Boris Iofan in 1938-39. A couple of years later, the architect revised the idea and created another utopia – the Palace of Soviets, which was supposed to grow on the site of the destroyed Cathedral of Christ the Savior. But even this “Tower of Babel” remained only an intention. In the 20th and 21st centuries, mankind created a lot of skyscrapers, however, the most ambitious projects often remained unfulfilled. As if repeating the biblical story.

Each of the sections contains rare documents and objects that tell about nations, the art of speech, the ability to communicate and negotiate from different angles. A separate room presents ancient manuscripts with translations into several languages. Another presents portraits of skilled diplomats who have written their names in the history of art. This, for example, is the artist Peter Paul Rubens (portrait with his son Albert – from the Hermitage collection) – he was not only an outstanding painter, but also an adviser to Isabella of Spain on the extension of the truce with the Dutch Republic, moreover, he knew six languages. The son of an artist-diplomat was also a polyglot – he wrote poetry in Latin.

Opposite Rubens is a portrait of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, who spent 22 years in Europe, was a diplomat, privy councilor, and was fluent in five languages. Together with the images of Rubens and Tyutchev, their correspondence, which influenced the political events of their time, is also presented.

In the beginning was the word, says the first line of the Gospel of John. The word is man’s most powerful weapon, wrote Aristotle. It is amazing how thoughts about the power of speech manifest themselves in different cultures. At the exhibition, for example, you can find a whole collection of ceramic products made in the form of hieroglyphs, letter carpets, eloquent portraits with language ciphers. The centuries-old history of mankind is filled with disagreements, local and global, political and domestic, and all of them were ultimately resolved through the word. Which sometimes became the basis for amazing works of art.